Last week, completely out of the blue, I found out that mine and the other Listen Up! participants’ artworks had travelled all the way to the Hearing Voices World Congress in Boston USA! The work was exhibited there to an audience of delegates from all over the world.

It is exactly a year since I created the mirror pieces that are very personal to me. It feels so strange that the work that means so much to me and my past has been to a country I only ever see on television. Pride doesn’t do the feeling justice, it’s more a sense of complete awe that it has made it all the way over there.

I received lots of lovely tweets and messages from delegates viewing my work which really put a smile on my face. Again thank you to the Hearing Voices DU team and @literarti who went out with the pieces.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my lovely followers! It has been a hectic but mostly happy year for me. Here are some drawings inspired by the season that I’ve been working on. Next year my hope is to share on this blog more often. Please note that this site is now ‘imogen-creates.com‘. I changed it because over the last year I have branched out into other art forms hence why my old site name didn’t really fit anymore.

Last week I was over the moon to see the ‘Hearing Voices: Suffering, Inspiration and the Everyday’ exhibition for myself. I have blogged before about how myself and a group of other young voice hearers created art to be displayed for the groundbreaking exhibition. In absolute honesty I was expecting hushed rooms and many glass cases; maybe with undertones of pity for us voice hearers. I was pleasantly surprised to find colour and sound and passion. The displays actually make voices appear to the public as just a part of life that some of us experience. Far from the freak show or pity parade I feared. In the exhibition is tons of information- even areas where you can stand on a carpet to hear a simulation of having voices in your head. My wonderful Learning Support Practitioner, K, managed to see the exhibition while in Durham on holiday. She said: “it makes hearing voices seem like just a part of being human”. This message is exactly what myself and the other young people had hoped to get across in our work. So what was the best bit? For me it must have been seeing the work of young people who struggle so greatly at times alongside original manuscripts of greats like Virginia Woolf and Julian of Norwich who experienced similar. I felt pride to have my work next to creatives like Wolf and Beckett. I have overwhelming pride for the project and all it encompasses for people who hear voices. Maybe, just maybe, alongside the horrific pain voices can cause, there is a vibrance, passion and creative flare that we can share with the world or simply use to get by.

Want to see it for yourself? The exhibition is open until the 26th of February 2017. You can find out more here.

After meeting twice to create artwork in Leeds it was time to meet the project participants from other parts of the north. We gathered in Durham to finish our pieces ready for exhibition. We met in Palace Green Library near Durham Cathedral, which is where our work will be exhibited in November. As with previous workshops the space that the facilitators created felt very safe and relaxed. We had all the art supplies you could dream of, and were also able to discuss how we wished our work to be displayed in the exhibition. Quickly a lot of us became close, and we all felt the palpable sense of having shared experiences with one another. The two days flew by.

Sculptures, posters, paintings, figurines and mixed media images were made as seen below. Now we just wait for November and the exhibition opening!

Thank you so much to the Wellcome Trust and Hearing the Voice for giving time and space to simply be.

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